Elizabeth Lee

On January 12, 2024, “Mean Girls” the musical was released into theaters. Though many people thought this movie was a hit, it lacked in many ways. From the bad advertising to the disappointing music, this musical did not live up to the original film.

When the new Mean Girls musical was released to theaters on January 12, there were high expectations for it, as many people hoped it would be better than the original. The 2004 Mean Girls is a classic that will live in history forever, though the new musical lacked in comparison. Here are some of the ways that the adaptation of Mean Girls was a flop.

Disappointing Music

“This whole school humps my leg like a chihuahua.” Yes, you read that right. That is an actual lyric from the song “Meet the Plastics.” With lyrics like these, it has me wondering how this musical brought in $32 million dollars in a single weekend. The other songs weren’t any better either. Most of them consisted of cliche topics like popularity, isolation, revenge, and love – and not in a deep, thought provoking way. Rather, it consisted of surface level lyrics that were all extremely predictable. Whenever a new song began, the theater sighed with disappointment, knowing that the new song would be just as bad as the last. These songs may have worked for the Broadway Mean Girls in 2018, though in the adaptation, it was not a success.

Inappropriate

Even though the Mean Girl’s adaptation was rated PG-13, it’s still an uncomfortable movie to watch with your parents. Mean Girls was originally rated R, however, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) didn’t approve and called for certain scenes to be cut and lines to be replaced. Even with the modifications, many scenes included implied sex, language, and glorified underaged drinking. The setting of Mean Girls takes place in a high school environment, so naturally, the target audience are teenagers. Is this the kind of movie that we want them to be influenced by?

Bad Advertising

“We didn’t want to run out and say it’s a musical because people tend to treat musicals differently,” the president of Paramount’s Worldwide Marketing and Distribution Marc Weinstock said. So if viewers don’t want to watch a musical…why make one? Even though the two versions are not necessarily the same, the false advertising made the musical appear as a modern day remake. The addition of music only appeals to a small audience, so of course their marketing team had to deceive their viewers to get more people into the theaters. If they expected this film to not perform well if they told the truth, then it shouldn’t have been made in the first place.

Despite some of the positive feedback that the movie received (likely from the theater kids), Mean Girls the musical, was an overall bad movie for the rest of us. If you are interested in watching this film, spare yourself and watch the 2004 original instead.